Why Worry, It’s Only Plutonium
04.30.2008 - 7:21 AMThe Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, headed by David Albright, has issued an “update” on the Syrian reactor destroyed by Israel on September 6, 2007 and it contains plenty of good news — but only if one willingly suspends belief and takes their analysis seriously.
To begin with, reports ISIS, “the United States does not have any indication of how Syria would fuel this reactor, and no information that North Korea had already, or intended to provide the reactor’s fuel.”
True enough. But does that offer reason for comfort or prove anything at all? After all, up until the U.S. discovered that North Korea was helping Syria build a reactor, it also had “no information” that this particular proliferation activity was going on.
“The lack of any identified source of this fuel,” continues the ISIS study, “raises questions about when the reactor could have operated.” Furthermore, neither the U.S. nor Israel has “identified any Syrian plutonium separation or nuclear weaponization facilities.
Also true enough. But what do these gaps in the picture mean? If a country expends the resources, and takes the considerable risk, of building a secret plutonium-producing reactor, is it likely to be doing so to turn it into a museum? That seems to be ISIS’s conclusion: “[t]he apparent absence of fuel, whether imported or indigenously produced, . . . lowers confidence that Syria has an active nuclear weapons program.”
ISIS also calls attention to some other encouraging news: “North Korea has committed to end its proliferation activities.” But even if the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il says cross my heart and hope to die, is this a promise one can take to the bank? According to ISIS — yes — and moreover there is this heart-warming fact, “[t]here is no evidence that nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea extended beyond the date of the destruction of the reactor.”
All told, Pyongyand has been a paragon of non-proliferation virtue: “engagement is working and is increasing U.S. and regional security.”
ISIS’s motto is “Employing Science in the Pursuit of Peace.” Perhaps a better motto would be “Employing Science in the Pursuit of Peace at Any Price.”
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April 30th, 2008 at 12:36 PM
Or perhaps, “Employing Science in the Pursuit of Peace in our Time.”
Albright has his uses, in that he doesn’t actually publish misleadingly as regards facts. It’s the analysis and policy counsel you have to ignore.
As you say, the bottom line here is that Syria was building, with North Korea’s help, a plutonium-producing reactor. I think my absolute favorite explanation of this “inexplicable” project is that Syria wanted to obtain a bargaining chip to get Israel to sit down and talk. Poor Syria, reduced to such a desperate stratagem because those mean Israelis won’t negotiate (on Syria’s terms) otherwise!
(Poor Syria, stupid enough to think Israel would let another reactor be completed in her vicinity, and sit down at the negotiating table to try to make it go away — instead of just striking it as she did in ‘81.)
Poor Syria, bottom line. Israel made ‘em do it.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:09 PM
what is killing the west are not the jihadists or the axis of evil (which overlap), but the west’s desperation to delude itself everything is hunky dory and there is no evil in the world, to the point that it actually supports the axis in its strategic effort to dhimmify the west.
this is also a good demonstration that natural scientists should not make political or military decisions. it is well documented that in experiments about the paranormal the easiest to be fooled were natural scientists. that’s because they work with subject matter which does not lie or mislead, so they don’t take that possibility into consideration when they involve themselves with human subject matter.
oao
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
April 30th, 2008 at 1:15 PM
(Poor Syria, stupid enough to think Israel would let another reactor be completed in her vicinity, and sit down at the negotiating table to try to make it go away — instead of just striking it as she did in ‘81.)
I wouldn’t dismiss that as such a big mistake. Given the increasing decline of the west and the US, the incompetence and weakness of the israeli elite, the gullibility, and what the axis of evil has been able to get away with, it’s natural for assad to have thought that he might get away with this too. I mean, look at all the who is who who went to kiss his ass: pelosi, senators, brzezinky, carter. i’m surprised he was not proposed for a nobel prize.
folks, i’ve seen the enemy and it is us.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:41 PM
The ISIS analysis has a whiff of Pravdaspeak about it. Unfortunately it merely indicates how deep their heads are in the sand ,maybe it’s the smell of rotting heads!!!
April 30th, 2008 at 6:15 PM
Strangely, I find an analysis that essentially concludes that nuclear proliferation does not become an issue until the moment the reactor is being fueled, and better yet, that even this is not a cause for concern until this as accompanied by weaponization, unconvincing. By this logic Syria could build the reactor and derive the necessary ingredients for a nuclear weapon, but up until the moment that they actually build the device (of course the easiest part) it nevertheless cannot be associated with a nuclear weapons program. Come to think of it, that’s the NIE in a nutshell.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:37 PM
I don’t understand Schoenfeld. He is disgusted with the ISIS document. He sneers at its findings. Because, while it acknowledges that a nuclear plant existed at the bombed location, no fuel processing facility has been discovered.
That is not a whitewash. It does not mean the Syrians or North Koreans are exonerated, it means there is a mystery. Another shoe is bound to drop.
Might Assad have had an understanding with the Russians to provide the fuel in good time?
Did the Iranians promise to provide the fuel once their operation is running?
Conceivably Syria has plutonium separation and weaponization plants which have simply not been discovered. Albright leaves all those possibilities open. The Osirak site had such a facility yet Hans Blix’s inspectors walked by without suspecting its existence in 1981.
I also don’t understand why Schoefeld reduces the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program to a mere Kim Jung Ill promise, when Albright writes:
The North Korean are slippery and they are dragging their feet, but until we have a better way to tie them down, there is no point in disparaging the substantial progress that is being made.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:48 PM
NaCl,
The Albright quote you gave us must be considered in its context; that Albright is one of the complete fools that Kim and pals worked over in the first place. She says that ‘work on obtaining a declaration… is yielding new information… ‘
I cannot imagine a more vague reason for anything resembling optimism, and it’s why I have none of the latter.
Offering Albright as evidence of any kind of progress in this area is self-defeating.
Hence Gabe Schoenfeld’s ‘disgust’, which was too strong a word
April 30th, 2008 at 7:50 PM
For some reason my laptop likes to pretend I hit the return key even when I didn’t. Oh well… it was only the period that didn’t make it to the end of that sentence.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:10 PM
nacl - Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and India all built their reactors years before their fuel processing facilities, in order to produce uranium for the processing facilities from their reactors. Iran’s current inverted timeline (uranium processing underway, reactor not yet critical) is an anomaly, made possible by Russia’s willingness to supply uranium to Iran for processing. But Iran too has had a reactor for almost 30 years, and uranium processing and enrichment facilities for less than 10.
If Assad expected to get uranium from Russia, it’s not the processing facility he could dispense with, it’s the reactor. Since the reactor was being built, with the assistance of North Korea, it’s as surreal as Zeno’s paradox to keep arguing basically, “Well, they still hadn’t started doing anything yet.” Sure, and it’s a great paradox that an arrow can never reach its target, because in theory you can keep dividing the remaining distance in half, no matter how small it gets. That has tremendous applicability to real life, in which reactors do come online, plutonium does get produced, and nuclear weapons result.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:51 AM
David,
The Albright of this piece is not Madeline, the former Secretary of State, but David, a physicist with substantial experience in proliferation and arms control matters. He is not a dope or a pushover.
J.E. Dyer,
It is not a question of downplaying the danger. The revelation of a secret reactor plant shows that the Syrians have an itch for nukes which the destruction of theAl Kibar reactor certainly has not ended.
But noting that no facility required for a weapon program has been found is not a “peace in our time” declaration. It is a simple and important statement of fact.
You are incidentally wrong about the fuel. As I understand it, a Yongbyon type reactors runs on slightly enriched uranium. In time, depending on the megawatt power of the reactor, it grows plutonium around the fuel rod tips. To make a weapon, that dangerous and difficult to handle fissile material must then be removed from the rods and packed away in small quantities. Harvest 4 kilo and with a good bomb design that’s enough critical mass for a small weapon.
As to using the reactor’s initial fuel, that might be do for a dirty bomb, capable of causing a fire and dangerously irradiating a couple of acres, but there would not be a sustained chain reaction. Even if that fuel were delivered as weapon grade U-235 there might be enough for one crude bomb, but not for a nuclear arsenal.